Some ‘Relationship’ advises for men…

Although I don’t consider myself an expert in giving relationship advice, I’ve met some remarkable women and been through some intriguing relationships. Based on my observations, I decided to create a compilation and pass on the learning to my fellow men. Since women are more in touch with their emotional side, I believe that they can take care of themselves and besides, every woman has 1 or more female companions who play the role of emotional advisor and body guard. Men however have been deprived of these emotional/ relationship advises and there by end up learning from their faults, as I did.

Do’s:

- The first ground rule is that you need to accept that every woman is unique; each one has their own set of likes & dislikes which cannot be generalized, unlike in men.

- Be confident. Like yourself, your life and things around you. Don’t pretend to be what you’re not. Women have this tingling 6^th sense that’s unfortunately good in finding this out.

- Let them do the talking. Just ask the right questions and let them open up at their own pace.

- Make silly jokes once in a while. Making them laugh & have fun is the 1^st step towards a relationship.

- When you say you're going to call, call. Even just to say that you don’t have time for a long conversation.

- Be a polite and compassionate gentleman. For ex, always open the door for the lady when you walk in somewhere.

- When they come asking for advise, tell them what they need to hear; Not what is right. Although they might listen to a lot of opinions, they would, more often than not, end up doing the right thing.

- During aggravations, sarcastic comments or fights- stay calm. Every wrong word is like a sharp knife and will carve out a chunk of a loving relationship that can never grow back.

- Always remember all your anniversaries. Make sure that you do something special, small or big, to make them understand that they’re there on your mind constantly.

- If you're mad or upset, say something. Don’t pretend saying ‘Nothing, I'm fine’.

- Emotional, Intellectual and sexual compatibility all are equally important to a relationship, but ensure that all 3 have a healthy balance.

- Pay attention to your partner’s intake of medicine, food, and fluids and how these variations affect their energy levels and moods.

- If you decide to break up seriously- stick on to your decision. No point in postponing a break up and any reconciliation will drag out more pain.

Don’ts:

- Never keep a score card or a fault sheet. Forgiving, costs you nothing and rest assured the favor is always returned as long as your partner is reasonable.

- Don’t talk about previous relationship if you are jealous or possessive type. Better to keep them buried.

- Don’t take her for granted and don’t let yourself be taken for, either.

- Never change yourself for your woman. True love should be based on loving each other just the way that they are without any customizations. Don’t force her to change as well.

- Never stare or flirt with any other woman in front of them, especially if your partner is possessive.

- Never let suspicion build up. Figure it out, talk it out and resolve it immediately.

- Don’t shout or be shouted at as well, during a fight. Both can’t be pissed at the same time, if the relationship is to work. Once everything gets out of the system, go out for a coffee or dinner and discuss things.

- Never compare the woman in your life with anyone else; even if it were to be your sister, mother or aunt.

Having given these words of wisdom, since I’m always approachable, do come up with more relationship pointers for the benefit of all those love birds out there. If you girls think that something can be added to help the guys to be more understanding, feel free to comment. And last but not the least, like the old ones say ‘Don't go to bed angry and one who cooks does not do the dishes’.

The art of cooking…

As some of you might have known, I had my 25^th birthday last week. Apart from the usual B’day bash on 11^th, I decided to have a separate party at home for some of my colleagues. Just as in Pune, I love to cook at home especially for guests and always end up making a big deal of it. Since this was the first invite for my team since I’ve come to Chennai, I decided to cook with some variety in non-vegetarian, meaning to have white meat, red mean and some good sea food. Menu for the day, although was Chicken Masala, Pepper prawns and Chinese beef, you would find some customization based on my taste. Being new in Chennai after a long time, I have to mention that there is not much of difference from what it was in 2006. Since I stay at OMR, picking up some decent, clean meat is quite tough and I have to either move to Velachery or Adayar.

Anyway, planning had started from the morning and I went down to Nilgiris, Adayar with one of my old college-mates to pick up groceries and other stuff. Picking up the chicken is by far the easiest, as I completely trust the Godrej- Real good chicken. The part which I like is that the skin and the edible organs are kept in separate pouches, since not everyone prefers to have them added to the dish. Although the skin can be used to make some quite delicious chicken soup or can also be given to people who desperately want to put on weight. I’m not sure on the prices of prawns in Chennai, but I got about ½ kg of Jumbo prawns for a decent price of Rs.150, which I’d say is not as cheap as what I used to buy in Mumbai. Now for the red meat, I picked up around ½ kg of my favorite food, beef. While on the way back, I had grabbed a bottle of rum and some Red Bull cans, to give us some company while were cooking. You might as well sip on some good liquor, which we ended up using for marinating as well, Lol.

Here comes the part that most people don’t like- Cleaning the meat. When you buy meat from supermarket instead of the meat shop, it’s always best to have the meat soak in water for 30min to have it reach it original state. This makes it easier for the blood and other fluids to drain out completely from the meat. People, who are particular on calories and diet…this is the place where you remove all the fat components. For ease of readers I’ve divided the preparation over the next 3 paragraphs.

Empty the chicken content into a bowl and added some chicken powder, meat masala, chili powder, salt, pepper, vinegar and ½ pint of yogurt. After a manual mix of all these, left it for about 2 hours. Now, at the other side I heated up some oil with nicely chopped onions, squashed slices of tomatoes, ginger garlic paste, small pieces of capsicums. Potatoes are optional and can be added if you wish to make the curry more thick, but do remember to add more spice in that case cause potatoes generally subdue the spiciness. Once this is finely done, add the chicken that was marinated and leave to boil. Add 2 or 3 cups of water as required at regular intervals. Once cooked, add some coriander leaves on top, for the aroma.

Marinating Prawns was also done in a pretty similar fashion with fish masala, chili powder, salt and a considerable large quantity of pepper. I recommend a manual mix for this as well, with 1hr absorbing time. Heat some oil with chopped onions, tomato puree, ginger garlic paste and some oyster sauce. After about 5 minutes, add the prawns and some water. Heat till the prawn gets cooked. Serve it with some schezwan sauce or green chili sauce.

Unlike the other two, beef being quite tough meat, is always required to boil to make it softer. I mixed up the beef with some pepper, salt and boiled it up in an electric cooker for about 1hr. This ensures that the meat is really soft enough to slide down your lips. This being my favorite, as expected, I always marinate with meat masala, chili powder, salt, pepper and around 60ml of rum. Do keep the broth from the boil, as this is to be used at a later point. Heat some oil with chopped onions, ginger garlic paste, cooking paste, tomato paste and some soya sauce. After about 10 minutes, add the beef and the broth. Rest assured this will have to get cooked for another 30min for taste to get absorbed into the meat. Once cooked serve with some mayonnaise sauce and chopped cabbage.

Anyway, we soon started off with hard liquor, some sandy mix and one of Russel Peter’s shows to watch along, soon to be followed by one of my favorite songs ‘Pyar Ke Pal’, which I played on audience request. All in all it was a good evening with some quality food for the mind and body.

Recession…

By far, ‘Recession’ has been the most spoken of word in the year 2009. With American corporate giants closing down, such as Layman Brothers, global economy has slowed down drastically causing mass unemployment, markets to crash and prices falling. This fall, as expected, in turn affected other industries and fields of life, just as a stone thrown in a lake that causes ripples in all directions. But my concern is what the actual effects of this so called recession are? In what ways is India affected? What have the IT organizations planned for this scenario?

With the closure of some of the American companies, other organizations that are indirectly related to them have also been affected and hence some of the generic counter actions implemented is cost cutting, resource management and optimum utilization. Over a drill down analysis and discussion, we would find that all these 3 are very closely interrelated. From an IT perspective, these terms have led companies to bring down billing and drive quality service at less expense. From sources, I hear that most of the projects of American origin have faced some serious back-outs in all India based multinational IT firm. Some projects have removed resources, some have been partly closed and even some have been shut down. Accepted that these factors have ended up in people losing jobs and for the remaining who are employed, has created wide spread tension and a sense of insecurity. I remember reading an article sometime in January which said that prices of 2^nd hand cars dropped by 30% after recession hit Bangalore.

On the other front, I believe that the entire recession scenario has been hyped up by all IT companies beyond actual reality, for their own benefit. Wondering how…? Let’s discuss…Fact is that recession has hit India very delicately and is not as adverse as what happened in the US. In spite of recession, IT firms make profits in billions of rupees. The YOY and quarterly profits are just as high as usual with a marginal difference of 8% on the figures. Probably instead of making $ 40 million profit they may be making $ 35 million. More over the price of dollar which was Rs.42 before recession, has now stepped up to Rs.50. This further neutralizes the effect of lesser billing to the client, since all companies carry on their funds conversion with $ as base. In such a case, why are employees not give proper salary hikes? Employee facilities/ perks have been made more stringent in most cases. In some cases they have been removed completely in a pretext to maintain profit margins. The companies giving a minimal salary rise also adds to their profit. Most of my readers being from IT sector, I’m sure all would agree to the fact that ‘recession’ has been used to over-load employees with more work but still paying less salary. All corporate companies use the recession scene as a shield to avoid answering these questions.

It actually turns out to be a tragic triangle- the clients are protecting themselves from damage, the companies are protecting themselves from damage but the employees are the ones to get affected as don’t have any way out. I strongly believe that the employment regulations and policies of our country need to be reviewed and revised. Special attention has to be given to employees from IT and associated sectors as they are by far the most affected from these IT firms. In spite of the huge profits, companies still try to minimize expense on employee as less as possible. While the work done by the employee is expected to be error free and of the highest quality, the facilities and the benefits given to the employee from these companies remain to be of very poor standards. This situation is however applicable only to India based IT firms and not to companies from other countries which have one of their offices in India.

Perhaps this would also be the best time for India based IT companies to start thinking more towards their own IT products rather than the support and service. As per latest data more than 65% of profits are drawn from IT Infrastructure based and other support functions. This huge component is by far the most susceptible to the recession scene. The remaining 35% figure is towards development and other ancillary fields. It’s high time for Indian govt. as well to start investing and encouraging other industries, some of which have long been neglected. We can put more thought into marketing, manufacturing, health care, tourism etc. Innovation now may prove to be the final key and the engine for growth which would help boost India and give us the edge over other countries, when the next boom occurs.